Monday Apple Rumors: 20 Billion iOS Apps Downloaded in 2012

The App Store now has 500 million user accounts

Lots of Bandwidth: Users have downloaded 40 billion apps from Apple‘s (NASDAQ:AAPL) App Store since its debut four years ago, CNET notes. Half that number came just last year. The App Store launched in 2008, a year after the iPhone’s debut, and now offers 750,000 apps for devices running iOS and maintains 500 million active user accounts. In December alone, users downloaded 2 billion apps from the App Store. Industry research firm Flurry Analytics expects mobile app downloads for both Apple devices and those running Google‘s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android operating system to hit 2 billion a week by year-end.

Holiday Eclipse: According to data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, iOS devices racked up the most sales prior to the start of the Christmas shopping season, PC World notes. Kantar found that iOS devices accounted for 53.3% of mobile device sales during the 12 weeks prior to Nov. 25. Android devices saw their share of sales fall to 41.9%, down 10.9%. Sales of devices running Microsoft‘s (NASDAQ:MSFT) operating system hit 2.7% of all devices sold in November. The new iPhone 5 sent iOS sales soaring during the period. In a consumer survey, Kantar found that 40% of iPhone 5 purchasers were first-time smartphone owners, while 34% upgraded from an older iPhone and 27% switched from another platform. Kantar’s data stand in contrast to other industry research firms, including ComScore, which found Android still accounting for the majority of smartphone sales during the holiday season.

Big Branding: Apple spent a record $1 billion on advertising in fiscal 2012, CBS MoneyWatch notes. It has been spending progressively more on advertising each year. In 2006, Apple spent $338 million on ads and doubled that to $691 million by 2010. In 2011, Apple’s ad spending reached $933 million. Other sales, general and administrative expenses also climbed, hitting $10 billion in fiscal 2012. But that accounted for just 6% of revenue, down from previous years.

For more about the company, check out our previous Apple Rumors stories.